


won't you stay ('til the a.m.)

by oopshidaisy



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Caretaking, Class Issues, M/M, Pre-Slash, Repression, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Ronan Lynch's Love Language Is Acts of Service, Sharing a Bed, of the emotionally repressed variety, there's not only one bed but they end up sharing anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27031366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oopshidaisy/pseuds/oopshidaisy
Summary: The one time Adam stayed at Monmouth. Set pre-series.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 9
Kudos: 134





	won't you stay ('til the a.m.)

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh so i only just finished the first book and am about 10 chapters through the second but i just Had to write something so here we go
> 
> title from a.m. by one direction

Adam had stayed at Monmouth all of once. It was ridiculous, Ronan thought, how Adam acted like the simple act of spending the night at Gansey’s would somehow ensnare him and force him out of his life of poverty and abuse. As if that would be such a bad thing.

Not that Gansey wasn’t always looking for ways to ensnare Adam. Gansey spent half his days thinking of the perfect combination of words that would make Adam see his generosity as anything other than charity. Ronan knew there wasn’t a sequence of words in the English language that could work that miracle—but that was Gansey for you, the eternal optimist.

Gansey wasn’t even there the night Adam stayed. Perhaps that was the only reason Adam let himself do it, knowing that Gansey couldn’t see.

And so Adam could have taken Gansey’s bed. Either of them could: it was just there, entirely unoccupied, covered in an assortment of texts and notes that would have been all too easy to sweep off and onto the floor.

Adam had actually come over to apologize. Not because he meant it; he clearly thought Ronan had been the one in the wrong, making a scene at Nino’s by covering Adam’s part of the bill. But it wouldn’t have been a scene if Adam had just let him do it, so. Ronan hadn’t apologized. He hadn’t expected Adam to, either; he’d thought it would get swept under the rug, unmentioned, so that Gansey wouldn’t force them to talk it out.

But Ronan had opened the door, yawning because it was already midnight, and Adam had been stood there. He’d obviously just come from work, and there was something manic around his eyes.

“Never do it again,” he said. “As long as you never do it again, then I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

Ronan frowned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. “Come in, Parrish,” he muttered, and didn’t move away fast enough for Adam’s body not to brush his as he went by.

“Do you and Gansey honestly think I’m some sort of charity case?” Adam demanded, but he wasn’t shouting about it this time. That was an improvement, at least.

Ronan raised his eyebrows and headed to his room, not looking back to check if Adam was following. Adam would stay until he got all this out of his system. Until he made sure Ronan knew that any expression of kindness would be met with the eviscerating fire of Adam’s self-righteousness.

There was just about a path from Ronan’s bedroom door to his bed, but everything else was covered in detritus and valuables—with no differentiation between the two. Ronan flopped back against his pillow, where he’d been before he heard the knocking on the door.

“It’s pity or nothing, huh,” he said.

“Ye-es,” Adam agreed slowly. He managed to pick his way around to the other side of the bed, where he sat carefully, at a distance. “It’s not the same as it is between you and Gansey. You _must_ get that, right?”

“Sure,” Ronan said. He’d have to figure out a way to be sneakier, in future. Or, at least, do something to douse the sick anger he felt whenever he saw the panic that crossed Adam’s face when he saw a bill or checked the price of something. Adam shouldn’t _have_ to feel that way. And it would’ve been so easy, just ridiculously simple, for Ronan and Gansey between them to ensure that Adam never felt it again.

Ronan reached out and grasped Adam’s wrist. It was ringed with shadows of bruises. Ronan wanted to be gentle with it, so he wasn’t. He turned Adam’s hand this way and that, and Adam—let him. Not even a whisper of protest.

“Is aspirin too much _charity_ for you?” Ronan sneered. His throat felt hot and tight.

“No,” Adam said, “but it’s not necessary, I’m—”

“Save it.” Ronan stood up, kicked a pair of jeans aside and retrieved a pack of aspirin from his bedroom floor, tossing it into Adam’s waiting hands. He went to leave the room, to get a glass of water to wash the pills down with, and that was when he was struck by the bizarre impulse: “Stay here tonight.”

Only lamplight breached the darkness of the room, and it was impossible to read Adam’s expression from a distance. But Ronan refused to let himself look away.

Adam said: “Fine.”

His voice was quiet, with no particular intonation that Ronan could examine.

It had been a few days since Ronan had last slept, or he never would have offered. That was what he told himself as he filled a glass with water from the bathroom sink, not letting it run cold first because he’d already given too much kindness for Adam to easily accept, especially from him.

Sure enough, Adam made no complaint about his lukewarm water. He took only one pill, and Ronan knew better than to encourage him to swallow more.

Ronan had already been dressed for bed when Adam arrived: tank top and sweats. He considered letting Adam fend for himself the way Adam always wanted to, but there was too high a possibility that he would simply opt to take his jeans off and sleep in his boxers, thinking it would be less inconvenient for Ronan. With any luck, he’d never know how wrong he was about that.

“You want some pyjamas?” Ronan tossed out. He was gratified by the tone of his own voice: he clearly could not care less.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Adam stiffly. Predictable to a fault.

Ronan grabbed a t-shirt and pyjama pants out of the chest of drawers that held only the clothes he barely ever used. The rest were scattered all over the floors, and atop the desk and chairs. He picked a t-shirt that he'd worn before—there was no helping that—but at least the pants were a gift from his brother he’d never had any intention of wearing. Seeing Adam in them would be relatively painless.

“You know where the bathroom is,” he said, passing the clothing over to Adam. This was it, he thought, the point of no return. Once Adam got changed, he was actually deciding to stay.

Ronan left the lamp on, but settled down into his side of the bed. It was risky, he knew, letting Adam be anywhere near him while he slept. It would be difficult to explain if, in the morning, Adam awoke to see an incongruous remnant of Ronan’s dreams in the bedroom. He should be more careful about guarding his secrets. All of them.

Still, it would be easier than actually trying to tell him. Adam was their resident sceptic and, ‘sometimes I dream things into reality,’ was never going to cut it with him.

On balance, Ronan decided it didn’t actually matter. If Adam woke up to something odd in the room, he simply wouldn’t believe it was Ronan who’d conjured it. He’d come up with some banal alternative explanation, and Ronan would go along with it. Besides, it wasn’t like it happened every night.

He turned his back to the middle of the bed, settling the pillow comfortably beneath his skull. With effort, he evened out his breathing.

The floorboard nearest the door creaked when Adam re-entered, and Ronan's body struggled against his mind, trying to tense even as Ronan mentally yelled at himself to relax. Clearly, Adam didn’t see this as a big deal. Clearly it wasn’t.

It was a big bed. Four-poster, memory foam mattress, all the signifiers of luxury that Adam hated. And yet Ronan heard his sigh as he sank into it, soft and wondering. It made Ronan flush hot, prickly irritation rolling through him.

“Thank you.” Adam's voice was so quiet Ronan thought he might have imagined it, or dreamed it. He grunted in response, but he also rolled onto his back, and for a moment his arm overlapped with Adam’s before he remembered to pull it back.

“Goodnight, Parrish,” he said, and then he fell into the most peaceful sleep he’d had in weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr [here](https://morgans-starks.tumblr.com/) and twitter [here](https://twitter.com/oopshidaisy)


End file.
